One, that last round of stimulus. Two, not agreeing to cutting spending when prices continued going up. Three, not massively greenlighting permitting around new energy and fossil fuels to bring energy prices into a deflationary stance. (Note: this is Monday-morning QB’ing from me.)
The whole pattern feels like a repeat of the country using Democrats to clean up messes (in this case, the mess was more Covid's than Republicans'), at which point they kick out the Democrats again. I don't think another massive tax cut (or extension of the last one) is a good idea.
Yes, this is likely what would have happened. And in that case the Dems would still lose because people would be upset about the high unemployment.
Yes, but you can target where that unemployment goes.
Democrats were probably too fair in distributing the pain. (As well as the fruits. Both the IRA and CHIPS Acts massively invested in counties that would have always voted Republican. That boosted turnout in an adversarial way.)
Of course what we need to be doing is halting all burning of fossil fuels ASAP, but that would be a losing electoral strategy. Who cares about the looming climate disaster, we need cheap gas...
The rest, and the part communicated to voters, is yet another fake issue. It’s exhausting.